Mark Twain Quotes

We build more prisons than we do classrooms; the quality of the prisons is better than the quality of the classrooms.

If you build a stadium, you don’t build a school. Indeed, you don’t build fifty schools.

It will not do to say we are too poor to educate the people--we are too poor not to educate them

But passing by all other considerations, and contemplating merely the political institutions of the United States, I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them.

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

There is little evidence that the length of a sentence, as opposed to its certainty, has significant deterrent effects. If we cut sentences in half across the board, there is no reason to believe we’d see an appreciable rise in crime, and over time we would most likely see a large drop in the prison population.

Our proclivity for incarceration costs American taxpayers about $80 billion a year. And that doesn’t count the vast indirect costs visited upon the incarcerated, their families and communities.

Complexity and innovation are not always good things.

The United States makes up 5 percent of the world’s population yet has 25% of its prison population.

We spend $94,000 per prisoner [per year]. There is a tension between punishment and making people’s lives better and I don’t actually think that we have done the second part well. We put people in prison and expect them to come out

There is not a single man in prison today who does not claim to be an ardent patriot

Anything free is worth what you pay for it

The majority of the people in jail are suffering from mental illness.

Every first year law student learns that sentencing has four goals: retribution, incapicitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.

The key for members of the public is that they want criminals to be punished. They want them taken off the streets. They also want criminals who come out of prison to go straight.

It makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration.

Eddie Conway is central to my first memories. My parents used to take me to, when it was open, the Baltimore city penitentiary to see Eddie Conway - I was talking to my dad about this recently - from the time I might have been one or two years old. I mean, literally, my first memories are of black men in jail, specifically of Eddie Conway.

If you go to prison, your child support adds up.

I really don't like being in jail.

What makes a lot of sense is that, while people are incarcerated, give them the tools they need to be able to have a productive, lucrative living when they leave so they can provide for their families and break that cycle of recidivism.

It was very difficult when I was young because there are problems with violence, gangs, guns, drugs - a criminal life. I had friends that choose a criminal life. Some of them are in prison, and some of them are dead. They chose the bad way.

When we cannot find enough extra money for policing, yet we are having huge sums to other countries in aid, it is time to start a serious conversation.

I've seen small businesses turn into terrible midsize or big ones because they let their desire to achieve some arbitrary metric get the best of them. Whatever is compromised as a result doesn't matter anymore, as long as the company is growing.

We'll get way further if we educate people and not lock them up.

So if you want a really effective criminal justice strategy, you don't build bigger prisons, you invest money in young kids - and you accept that it's going to take years to work through, but it's a more effective strategy.